The Botanical Research Resource Core will serve as a resource to for all four projects in this Botanical Research Center. It will centralize the acquisition and authentication process of the botanical test materials in the early phase. Then it will be responsible for fractionating and characterizing the active components from botanicals identified as active in projects by Livingston and Cheung. In the final phase, this core will oversee the formulation and preparation of two optimized products for clinical trials. The core will be led by Dr Ping Chung Leung of the Institute of Chinese Medicine (ICM) of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). It has pooled together a panel of experts in botanical medicine, herb formulation, biochemistry, plant genetics and clinical trials at CUHK to offer professional and logistical support to the projects. A systematic approach has been developed by the ICM to study botanical products through chemical characterization, pharmacological screening, pharmacokinetic studies, safety studies, and dosage formulation. This unified approach will facilitate quality control and streamline the overall effort making it more cost effective. Specific Aims are: 1) To centralize procedures for the acquisition and authentication of botanical test materials for all research projects. 2) To extract, fractionate and characterize the active components of botanicals selected in Projects by Livingston and Cheung. 3) To oversee the formulation, preparation and quality assurance analyses of botanical study agents for clinical trials in Project by Cassileth.